


The Doctor's Lament

by AndreaLyn



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-29 18:10:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20086558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: There are five stages of grief and Kyle's not sure which one he's stuck in, but after Caulfield collapsed in a pile of rubble, he knows that nothing will ever be the same, especially not him.





	The Doctor's Lament

It’s a heat unlike anything he’s ever felt.

It burns, licks at his face, and for a moment Kyle wonders if he’ll have any hair or eyebrows left. It makes him feel like jumping into an icy lake and submerging his body just to escape the fire, the heat, the way it feeds his fear.

The sound rages through his ears, louder than anything he’s ever encountered. 

The blow itself had been ear-shattering, but it’s the collapsing creaking as metal and stone fall inward that scrape at Kyle, making him cringe and curl up against the Jeep as he presses his back to it. 

What really does him in is the silence.

_Where are you? Alex, what the fuck? What the fuck._

He texts Alex, then Guerin, and then Alex again for good measure. He’s sure they went out a different exit and they’re on another side of the rubble. They need to regroup in order to get back to Roswell. There’s no way that they’ve done what they have without Jesse Manes figuring it out, which means that the brunt of a very different bomb is going to fall on them. 

They’re not safe.

Those are the thoughts that consume Kyle as the sun dips into the horizon. He stays in place because this is their rendezvous point and Alex and Guerin will be there. They’ll figure out their next steps to stay safe.

It isn’t until the night chill begins to make the desert intolerable that Kyle’s denial starts to wash away, like waves receding and taking all his hope with them. 

It takes Kyle an achingly long time to realize that there isn’t a _they_ anymore. Caulfield sits in shambles in front of him and no one is coming out of there alive. His phone remains silent. The howling air catches metal and the crackling of fire is the only sound that fills the desert. 

Right now, he’d give anything for Guerin to snap at him or Alex to bark an order at him. 

Kyle collapses onto the desert floor in a heap, alone. 

He’s not safe, but he’s not sure he can move.

They came here to figure out what Jesse Manes was up to. It had been meant to be a simple recon mission, but now Kyle’s here on his own and no one’s replying to his texts. What’s the last thing Alex said to him? What about Guerin? What happened to them and why didn’t they make it to the rendezvous?

He tells himself that they beat Kyle out. Guerin used his powers and found another way, but when Kyle stumbles to his feet and sways back to where they parked the truck, it’s still there. Alex’s backpack isn’t in the cab, Guerin isn’t lying in the truck bed and bitching about how Valenti is late.

It’s just him, the night sky, and an aching grief he can barely describe. 

He’s not sure how he manages, but he lets his brain drift to auto-pilot, allowing himself to sink into that numbness as he climbs into the driver seat. For a long while, he can’t do anything but stare forward into the night. The silence that invades the interior of the truck is deafening. Kyle grips the steering wheel and falls forward, his forehead pressed to the wheel as denial continues to ebb away. 

It feels like he slides right through anger and bargaining, straight into depression. 

Shakily turning the keys, he forces himself to make the drive back to Roswell, trying not to think about the fact that if they are still there, he’s leaving them. 

(If they didn’t make it out, he’s still leaving them, but in a different way)

One thing Kyle learns during his drive back, is that the gaping grief that threatens to swallow him whole is unlike anything he’s felt since he lost his father. The tapes and the files that sit in the car are a poor substitute for who they came with and what’s worse is that Kyle is driving back towards a town where they’re going to want answers. 

He’s still not so sure he understands. 

Kyle’s not really sure he wants to. Why did he think this had been a good idea to come out here and investigate some old prison? Why hadn’t they taken their time and done this properly?

Why hadn’t he tried to talk them out of it? 

Unfortunately, no one’s around to answer those questions for him and Kyle drives in silence through the dark of New Mexico, stuck between depression and an acceptance he’s not sure will ever come.

* * *

When Kyle arrives back in Roswell, he’s not sure where to go, at first.

How does he explain what they’ve done? How can he tell their friends that he let Alex convince him to go on a wild mission to find answers and he came home without them? How is he supposed to tell Max and Isobel that he lost Guerin? The pit of grief in his stomach only seems to be growing with every passing moment. 

He goes the one place he feels safest, pressing his palm against the glass of the Crashdown and knocking lightly. There’s no response and none of the lights go on, so he texts Liz that he needs to see her. 

_I’m at Max’s_, she replies. _Noah’s dying._

It’s only a fifteen-minute drive to Max Evans’ place, but it feels like he’s taken on the weight of two additional men on his shoulders during the drive, like their ghosts are weighing him down with the guilt and the grief. He parks the truck and sits there, gripping the steering wheel tightly, watching Liz move through the windows, then seeing Max and Isobel looking in the same direction.

He manages to get out of the truck, but he sways when the reality of what he’s going to have to do hits him. For all that he’s been brave in the past and thinks that while he’s not the kind of man who shies away from anything, this is the hardest thing he’s ever faced. 

It’s worse when he sees Max and Isobel inside the house. He’s going to have to tell them that he got their brother killed. He’s going to have to tell Liz that Alex is gone, and he’ll have to say it again and again, even though it still doesn’t seem _real_. How the hell did he make it out, but they didn’t? Those stupid idiotic slow-moving _assholes_…

It turns out he’s circling back around to anger, but he’s always known it’s not a straight progression through the stages. 

“Kyle,” Liz greets, waving at him. She’s running out to meet him, but staggers to a hard stop when she sees the look on his face. The desert dust kicks up around her feet, her palm covering her mouth, because she must see it in the trembling of his shoulders, the tightness around his lips, the sheen that shows his tears. 

He’s a terrible liar. 

She knows something is wrong. She doesn’t know exactly how bad it is, but she _knows_. Liz stares at him, shaking her head, because Kyle had told her that he’d be heading out with Alex to look into some of their fathers’ old files. Yet, here he is, without Alex and feeling haunted by the man. Max and Isobel come outside soon after, both of them already looking exhausted and torn apart.

It’s because they have Noah inside, he remembers. Or maybe it’s something else.

_When things are really bad for one us, the others get flashes of pain._

They know. 

“Tell us,” Isobel asks, sounding exhausted. She tugs her sweater tighter around herself and glares at Kyle. Max is standing beside her, his fists gripped tightly at his sides. 

How the hell is he supposed to do this? Back in med school, when they’d brought in that shooter and Kyle had meant to do something about it, he thinks that had been the hardest day of his life. That pales in comparison to this one, and it’s made worse by Isobel Evans insisting that he tells them what happened to their brother.

“We found some of my Dad’s letters,” he starts and it sounds so ridiculous and mundane. They hadn’t seen any danger in this. They saw an abandoned prison and the possibility of more research.

How could they have been so wrong?

He swallows and closes his eyes. “They were encrypted and Alex and I…Alex,” he corrects himself, because if he’s gone, then he needs to give him the credit he deserves. The lump in his throat only gets worse, thinking about how Guerin would haunt his ass forever if he didn’t. “Alex solved it, found a reference to a prison called Caulfield. My mom said it was abandoned, so Alex got Guerin to come with us and investigate.”

Now, for the worst of it.

Kyle gives Max and Isobel an apologetic look. “It wasn’t abandoned.” He’s slipped to the past tense, wonders if they’ve noticed. Liz still has both hands over her mouth, like she’s waiting for the conclusion, but Kyle thinks they all know.

Alex and Guerin and him had set off.

He’s the only one standing there with dust on his clothes and tears in his eyes. “We found aliens there. Guerin’s family, he thought. Alex’s brother was working in the prison, there was current staff running tests on these aliens because Jesse Manes had somehow masterminded this whole _insane_ prison where aliens are lab rats and…” He doesn’t need to talk about his father, how an alien had killed him, because it doesn’t matter now.

“Kyle,” Liz pleads.

“The alarms went off, some self-destruct mechanism that would completely destroy the place,” Kyle says, his voice sounding numb to his ears. “Alex made me run, told me that he’d meet me out there once he found Guerin. We had ten minutes. We had ten minutes,” he says, and he breathes in, “We had ten minutes, they should have made it out, I don’t know what happened, I don’t…”

He feels like he can’t breathe. Every time he inhales, it stops in his chest, and brings him closer to hyperventilating. 

“It was supposed to be abandoned,” he says, as if he can somehow circle all the way back to denial. “It was…”

Liz charges and wraps him up in a tight hug. He stands there unable to move, because he hasn’t said it yet. He meets Isobel’s eyes over Liz’s shoulder, sees Max’s distraught expression. 

“They never made it out,” he says. “I lost Alex,” he tells Liz, his voice wavering. He looks to Max and Isobel. “I lost Guerin,” he tells them. “I’m sorry.”

Isobel lets out a pained cry as she finally reacts, staggering backwards until her back hits the wall of the house. Max lets out a deafening shout and all the lights in the house explode as his anger manifests. Now that the words are out, Kyle lets himself sag into Liz’s arms, and acceptance creeps around him. 

It's not time for that, but he needs to believe that one day, he’ll feel something other than this gut-wrenching grief.

* * *

He’s not there when Max and Isobel take matters into their own hands.

He hasn’t left Max Evans’ house in days. He’d helped them bury Noah’s body under sun-baked clay and tried not to notice how his hands shook as he held the shovel. He’s so messed up that he doesn’t think about what Max and Isobel are going through, but it wouldn’t take a psychic to read the furious energy that’s radiating off them.

They left hours ago without telling Kyle where they were going, but from the hard-set look on both their faces, he knows that wherever they’re headed, whoever’s waiting for them should be _terrified_.

While they’re gone, Kyle finds Max’s whiskey stash and drinks.

He drinks and he drinks and when he pukes, he drinks some water and then slips whiskey down his throat to try and burn away the picture in his head of Caulfield in rubble, wondering where Alex’s body was in all that. Did he still have his prosthetic or did it get ripped away from him? Did Guerin figure out who those aliens were? Were they together, at least?

By the time Max and Isobel return, he’s worked himself back to sobriety, but he’s bone-tired. One day, probably soon, he’s going to wonder how the hell he can have anything left in this deep well of grief to feel, but he knows it’s only the beginning. 

“It’s done,” Isobel says curtly, hanging up her coat when she walks back inside. 

Kyle opens his mouth to ask _what_, but she walks right past him towards Max’s spare room, but he already knows there’s no respite there. She’s not going to feel any better, because he doesn’t. His eyes are scratchy, his throat hurts, and he’s swaying, but he doesn’t feel any better. 

“What did you do?” he asks, but it’s not in recrimination. 

Kyle needs to know so he can sleep at night. He needs something to convince him that this is somehow going to be made right. If Jesse has been dealt with, then he doesn’t need to think about what other atrocities he can commit, all because they’ve let him slip under their nose.

“Jesse Manes is no one’s problem anymore,” Max says coolly. He lets his gaze slide over Kyle, nodding to the couch. “You can stay, as long as you like.”

He thinks it’s because they understand one another. Liz has been in and out, had promised to break the news to Maria and the two of them are grieving in their own way, but Kyle shares something with Max and Isobel that Maria and Liz are never going to understand. He knows what had happened in that moment. He knows what had driven them out there. 

He decides to stay and he continues to abuse the hospitality of Max’s whiskey. 

The next morning, he wakes up hungover and aching, to a voicemail from his mother.

“I thought you might want to know that they found Jesse Manes in the desert with a handprint on his body. I know your father always talked about how you should go to the Manes if you saw one, but I think it’s best to leave it alone. I think it’s time for all of us to start putting some distance between us and the Manes family.” 

He still has to go over the files that they’d pulled from Caulfield, but not now. Maybe not ever. Kyle still isn’t sure he’s ever going to be able to make himself look at those papers and videos again, not without knowing how much blood they had to spill to get them. 

Kyle deletes his mother’s message and collapses onto Max Evans’ couch, where he doesn’t move for hours. He’s not so sure he’s ready to accept that he left Alex and Guerin to die, but at least he knows that Jesse can’t do anything else to hurt them. They’re not entirely safe, but Jesse can’t touch them. He can’t do anything to anyone.

One day, he’ll ask for details.

When the grief and the anger subsides, he’ll want to know how much they made him suffer and exactly how much pain they put him through. He knows they wouldn’t have let him off easily, but one day he’ll need to know to make sure that he got every single thing he deserved. He rubs both hands over his face and through his hair, still feeling completely inhuman, so he’s right at home under Max Evans’ roof. 

They wander out a few hours later, shattered lightbulbs in a box, and though he’s far from psychic, he swears he can still feel the air permeated with the numb grief that’s got him in a chokehold. They’ve been doing something, at least, where Kyle’s let the depression invade every muscle in his body and render him a statue.

“We didn’t want to believe it,” Max says, sitting down on one side of Kyle. “We felt it. When it happened. We felt his last moment.”

Kyle closes his eyes, his shoulders shaking as he tries not to think about how he should have. His best friend had been in that prison and he’d brought Max and Isobel’s _family_ in there, pushed him in a cell, left them in danger. He’s never going to get a chance to really make it up to Alex or see if he and Guerin could ever be friends.

Isobel sinks down beside Kyle on the other side and though none of them are touching, he’s bracketed by their warmth.

“It’ll be us together, now,” she says, flatly. “We know what happened to Jesse. We know about the prison and what they’re doing and we’ll deal with it. We’re together in this. We’re not alone.”

Kyle nods, like he’s taking that message to heart. He knows he’s going to have to tell himself over and over, but it’s better than doing this on his own, because that silence and that grief is too much for one heart to bear.

He can’t bring himself to wonder what’s been on the back of his mind this whole time, a thought that he’s not sure he can voice aloud because he doesn’t want to consider what happens if the answer to it is _no_.

Did Alex make it to Guerin?

Did they die alone? Young, wronged, and with no warning, did they at least find one another?

He can’t ask. He’s too scared that they didn’t and then it really would be too much for Kyle to bear to think about.

* * *

There’s under a minute left, but it’s too late. 

“She told me to run,” Michael says, but they both know that there’s no point.

With only thirty seconds before Caulfield evaporates into a footnote on a government report, they could run or they could spend those last few moments here together. Michael lets out a shaky laugh, his head falling as the tears fall from off his cheeks. They waited too long and they were too scared and broken to do anything about the chances they had. 

They waited too long and now they’ve missed any chance to try again.

Michael wishes that he could do what his mother does or what Isobel can. He wants to bring them somewhere safe and protect Alex from what’s coming. It’s not fair for him to have to go through this twice in his life, but this time, it’s because Michael’s dragged him into this, even if indirectly.

“When we were seventeen and you kissed me, you made me feel like I had a home, like I had a family, like I had a person,” Michael gets out, his breath hitching and shaking as he grabs at Alex’s shoulders, tears rolling down his cheeks as he hauls Alex in against him. 

He’s not going to die alone today, but that’s so much _worse_. This isn’t how it was supposed to be. This isn’t the life they’re meant to have.

“Alex…”

“No,” Alex murmurs. “No, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I dragged you out here, I’m sorry that this is how it ends, but I’m glad you’re not alone.” His face is lined with pain and his lower lip is shaking. Michael can hardly bear to see him like this. “I meant it, Guerin. You’re my family. You’re everything to me.”

Ten seconds left. There’s no more chances left in the world for them. 

“Michael,” Alex says, and it’s the first and the last time he’s ever heard Alex say his name, his _name_, like it belongs to him. It sounds so right, but Michael lets out a pained, wracked sobbing sound that dies in his throat because it’s so wrong that it’ll be the only time he gets to hear it. “I love you.”

If those are the last words he’ll ever hear, then Michael thinks he’s done well with his life. “I love you too,” he says, undoing the harms he’s just made with weaponized words. “Always have, always…”

_I always will_ is lost in the ear-shattering blow, but Michael presses forward and kisses Alex in those last moments.

The last thing he does on this earth is love Alex Manes the way he’d always deserved to be loved, and maybe it’s not what he’d wanted, but it feels like it’s _enough_.

**Author's Note:**

> I am so very sorry, but I could not get this AU out of my mind.
> 
> I spent most of the time writing this in tears and the accurate description of this fic, I'd say, is that first I wreck Kyle, then I wreck the reader, and I wrecked myself the whole time.


End file.
